Everything You Think You Know About Politics...and Why You're Wrong [Bargain Price] [Paperback]

Kathleen Jamieson (Author), Kathleen Hall Jamieson (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Here are a few facts Kathleen Hall Jamieson thinks you don't know about politics: most presidents try to keep their campaign promises, most candidate ads tell the truth, campaign rhetoric has not become more negative in recent years, reporters don't represent the content of candidate speeches very well, and attack ads don't depress voter turnout. There's more, but the point is clear: the conventional wisdom about politics is often wrong. Jamieson, a University of Pennsylvania dean and frequent guest on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, is determined to set the record straight.

Everything You Think You Know About Politics... and Why You're Wrong is messy and disjointed, but in a thoroughly enjoyable way. It's essentially a collection of essays--more than two dozen of them--on narrow-focus topics such as whether local TV or local newspapers do a better job of covering politics, the value of candidate debates, and press bias. Jamieson sometimes shares authorship credits on chapters, and most essays are marked by her determination to confound expectations. Not every chapter will interest every reader, but political junkies will find plenty of material worth perusing on these pages. Sometimes Jamieson's claims are provocative: "The gender gap in political knowledge is real.... Men answer more questions about candidate positions correctly than do women." She also argues strenuously in favor of media soundbites--they really do communicate political information effectively, she believes. Readers who intend to keep pace with the twists and turns of the 2000 election season will do well to thumb through this book: it's written with them especially in mind. Everything You Think You Know About Politics... will boost knowledge about how politics works and why campaigns and the media behave as they do--as well as increase readers' pleasure in observing the whole process. --John J. Miller --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Although the title overstates her case, dean of the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication and savvy political commentator Jamieson (Dirty Politics, etc.) challenges much of the assumed wisdom about presidential elections. It is, she writes, a "widely held belief that politics in the United States is broken: [that] soundbites are worthless..., politicians don't keep their promises [and] campaigns are increasingly negative." This is not trueDat least, not according to her data. Based on the results of the Annenberg Campaign Mapping ProjectDa collaborative research project that examined the character of every presidential campaign since 1952 and took 10 years to completeDthe book is at once scholarly and practical. Sprinkled with explanatory sidebar tidbits, cartoons and graphs, it conveys a tremendous wealth of information in an easily digestible format. Narrowly focused chapters deal with each faulty assumption one by one (several chapters are barely two or three pages); other chaptersDincluding the one about how local TV crime coverage feeds irrational racial fearsDare remarkably in-depth and subtle. The author argues that, contrary to what the pundits say, candidate debates are informative and useful; that most presidents try to keep their campaign promises; and that campaigning hasn't gotten more attack-based over time. Although it offers no discussion of the possibility that presidential campaigning might be broken in ways other than those examined here, Jamieson's thorough and persuasive book promises to add perspective to our sense of presidential campaigning when we need it most. This is essential reading for political junkies. (July)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books (May 31, 2000)
• ISBN-10: 0465036279
• ASIN: B000H2M89C
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,702,836 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Extremely informative and engaging, August 1, 2000

By 

Jussi Bjorling - See all my reviews

This review is from: Everything You Think You Know About Politics...and Why You're Wrong (Paperback)

Kathleen Hall Jamieson is very, very smart, and very good at challenging conventional wisdom. In this book, she demolishes most of the tried-and-thought-true assumptions about politics, usually taking a more optimistic tack. The thrust of her argument is first, that the American public is not becoming less politically capable (for the most part), and second, that the media pursues its own agenda and distorts the news more than we like to admit. She makes both of these points in a somewhat messy manner, because her topics are all over the place, but it's hard to disagree with her at the end.

20 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant, Insightful, Concise And With Outspoken Virtue!, August 19, 2000

By 

Joseph J. Janos III (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Everything You Think You Know About Politics...and Why You're Wrong (Paperback)

Kathleen Hall Jamieson has written an outstanding book on election politics, spin reporting and the media. If you want to add to your acumen by knowing how and why campaigns work the way they do, read this book. The book enlightens us through a series of essays and her perceptions and prudence are dazzling additions to the collection. This is one author who is knowledgeable about her subject area, will teach you more than you already know, and will make you search out even more books on the subject. I admire this book and author for writing it. I highly recommend you buy it and keep it, over time you can go back to it and know it is better than a soothsayer's vision.

41 of 51 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "Political Myths Dispelled", August 21, 2000

By 

Dan Wick - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Everything You Think You Know About Politics...and Why You're Wrong (Paperback)

Everything You Think You Know About Politics . . . And Why You're Wrong By Kathleen Hall Jamieson Basic Books

By Dan Wick

Do you believe that presidential candidates rarely fulfill their campaign promises? That attack ads have increased in recent years? Or that campaigns are mostly hype, rarely conveying useful information to the voter? If so, Kathleen Hall Jamieson would like you to know that you're wrong.

Dean of the Annenberg School for Communication and Director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania as well as a frequent and dispassionate commentator on the Jim Lehrer News Hour, Jamieson certainly knows whereof she writes. By providing a wide range of empirical studies about what actually occurs in national political campaigns, she effectively dispels myth and misperception.

On Presidential promises, for example, that putative promiscuous promise breaker, Bill Clinton, fulfilled 69% of his campaign pledges, which compares favorably with Reagan's 63% or Nixon's 60%. On negative ads, Jamieson observes that in 1996, "the proportion of pure attack ads declined by nearly half from 1980, 1988, and 1992." Public grumbling about attack ads, she says, stems from media overreporting .

Indeed, argues Jamieson, with the decline of political parties, the influence of the media on elections has greatly increased. Media coverage during the early political primaries tends to winnow the race to a contest between two major contenders so, while "the media may not be successful in telling us for whom to vote, . . .they are stunningly successful in telling us whom we may choose between."

Useful information is consistently conveyed by candidates in television ads, in their (generally ignored) stump speeches, and especially in political debates. Jamieson says that candidates almost always cite evidence supporting their views, which the media usually ignores, leaving the false impression that politicians trade exclusively in slogan and assertion.

Who knows more about politics, men or women? "The gender gap in political knowledge is real. . . .Men answer more questions about candidate positions correctly than do women." But, Jamieson argues, it may be that when political "information is at odds with their political preference, women may simply tally that fact, adjusting their preference accordingly, and . . . .fail to move that information into long-term memory." She uncharacteristically cites no evidence for this bit of wishful thinking.

The February 2000 South Carolina primary illustrates three of the book's most significant themes, Jamieson says: "First, contrast mobilizes. Second, ...voters reject [negative personal attacks]. . . .Finally, media coverage helps shape personal perceptions." So when Bush claimed that McCain had gone way over the line by comparing Bush to (horror of horrors) Bill Clinton, South Carolina voters evidently agreed, according to Jamieson. But nowhere does she discuss the religious right's whispering campaign against McCain, which amounted to a ceaseless volley of vicious attacks. In short, Jamieson is more selective in her evidence than she would like us to believe.

More than a compendium of studies debunking conventional wisdom, Everything You Think You Know About Politics is also a plea for greater civility and "engaged argument" in political campaigns: "In the speeches, ads and debates that constitute their discourse, candidates should be unambiguous and fair and should not employ guilt by association. They should also be consistent, accurate, and unbiased and tell the full story, not the partial truth." Huh? It is at this point that the reader may well wonder what alternate political universe Jamieson occupies. Of course candidates should do all of that but what politicians including the over-revered Founders, ever have?

Still, idealism aside, this is both a useful and an entertaining book. Jamieson permits herself a few wry jokes (in a brief discussion of Aristotle, she refers to political scientists' perennial "polis envy") and each chapter is introduced with a clever cartoon.

Most important, Jamieson's short book should persuade even the serial cynic that elections do matter. No small achievement in a presidential election year.